82 pages • 2 hours read
Jennifer EganA Visit from the Goon Squad
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 2010A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Time
At different points in A Visit from the Goon Squad, both Scotty and Bosco say, “Time’s the goon” (127; 332). The idea of time as a goon suggests that time is destructive, but also potentially protective. Time is a cause of both anxiety and hope, and its effects are seen on people, and also on objects and on culture.
As a source of anxiety, time is manifested in the novel through decaying objects, aging bodies, and a general sense of nostalgia that runs throughout the stories. Bennie takes gold flakes in his coffee to counteract the effects of aging on his body, while Sasha lies about her age in her dating profile. Both Lou Kline and Bennie Salazar at different times suffer professionally when they resist changing trends in their industry. In the later chapters, which are set in the future, we see a cultural movement away from the art of written prose, made most pointed in Alison’s textbook directions to favor graphics over large blocks of text. The fact that we, as readers, experience this information in graphic format, when we have come to expect conventional prose, evokes in us that sense of anxiety experienced by characters in the novel.
As a source of hope, Goon Squad portrays time as a vehicle for healing and renewal. Within a number of the stories, the narrator shifts into a future mode in order to predict what will happen to the characters later in life. As Ted Hollander sits with Sasha in the squalor of her palazzo, the narrator tells us that she will one day be “like anyone” (233), with a family and a relatively stable home life. Lulu, who features prominently in the last chapter of the novel, first appears in a story set long before her birth, as in “Safari” we read that the grandson of a warrior the Americans meet in Kenya “will marry an American named Lulu and remain in New York, where he’ll invent a scanning device that becomes standard issue for crowd security” (62). In this earlier story, the narrator introduces Lulu, and also predicts the large crowd that will gather for Scotty’s concert in the final chapter. These predictions, together with the repetition of characters and events, create a sense of continuity, a reminder that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Meaning
Meaning is the information conveyed through any expression, the significance we attach to our experiences. In A Visit from the Goon Squad, Egan reveals how different methods of storytelling produce various kinds of meaning. In “Forty Minute Lunch,” ostensibly a magazine article, what is supposed to be the report of an interview with a young actress turns into a confession of attempted rape. The form is undermined by its creator, as the journalist becomes the central focus of his own piece. “Great Rock and Roll Pauses” takes the form of a slide presentation, calling on us as readers to reconsider how we understand written text, to find meaning in the arrangement of words and shapes on a page, rather than on the linear sequence of words as they appear in prose writing.
Events in the novel reveal the instability of meaning. The infamous event, known to the public as “The Party”, starts out as “a wildly anticipated party” (141) that soon turns into a “debacle” (140) that brings about the personal and professional ruin of La Doll. But long after Dolly’s ruin, “The Party” continues to be an event that people associate with success in the world of celebrity, as demonstrated by Kitty’s acts of self harm in order to be included among that group of injured celebrities. This instability of meaning can also be seen in “Pure Language,” as Rebecca makes an academic study of word casings, words which have lost their meaning. Alex expands upon the relevance of lost meaning to human beings, when he observes that Scotty Hausmann “was a word casing in human form: a shell whose essence had vanished” (332). The fact that Scotty is still alive at this point suggests that the living human is an entity separate from the meaning that is attached to him. In fact, Scotty’s concert becomes an event like “The Party,” a shared experience that “more people claim . . . than could possibly have fit into the space” (336). Meaning is something that is projected onto the object by others, but it is not the object itself.
Identity
In A Visit from the Goon Squad, identity is a complex concept, raising questions as to what is natural and what is created. Bennie, who seeks to transcend his race and social class in order to be accepted into a wealthy society, feels limited by what is unalterable or uncontrollable about his body. His hair and skin color cause his country club friends to distrust him, and so he never fully assimilates. Sasha has very little sense of her own identity, as she spends most of her childhood and youth trying to detach herself from her own painful realities. Her lack of identity, made visible in “Out of Body” where her dorm room “is practically empty” (195), is manifested in her compulsion to steal objects that belong to other people and which symbolize their identity.
Many of the characters in Goon Squad attempt to assert or create identities, with varying degrees of success. In “Ask Me if I Care,” Rhea colors her hair green to assert her punk identity, in spite of the freckles that undermine it. Paradoxically, she observes that Alice is not a real punk, because she “wears ripped jeans and drippy black eye makeup but her hair is long and gold” (47). In “A to B,” Stephanie is delighted to finally be accepted into Crandale society, but her sense of herself as separate from these women causes her to view this as “the silliest victory of her life” (114). For Rhea, identity is about belonging to the group described as punk, and this designation carries the authority to include or exclude. For Stephanie, satisfaction comes from belonging to the group, while retaining her own individual identity.
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